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Cheap Eats Friday: Mega Pizza Kabab in Mid-City

Halal döner kebab straight outta Copenhagen

Rule of thumb: When a restaurant has both “Kabab” and “Pizza” in its name, it’s probably not a good sign. But I’m willing to make an exception for Mega Pizza Kabab, a Halal pizza and sandwich shop on the southern edge of Koreatown/Mid-City.

The Persian husband and wife team who own and operate the tiny shop are Denmark ex-pats, where they previously ran a similar restaurant in the city of Copenhagen. Most of the customers inside are Muslims, drawn I’d imagine by the Halal meats, which include gyro, chicken shawarma, and a paprika-topped Halal burger.

The menu promises “New York Style” pizza in one corner, but you’d be better off to ignore it. Instead, opt for the Copenhagen-style pizza, topped with shaved gyro, green pepper, red onion, garlic, and jalapeño. It’s then latticed with a garlicky mayo and a spicy red pepper oil.

Another popular option is the sandwich wraps, which, if you’ve ever traveled to Europe, you’ll recognize as Turkish-style döner kebab. The combination of shawarma, garlic sauce and hot pepper oil on a soft, puffy piece of fresh bread evokes the nostalgia of traveling Northern Europe as well as anywhere else I’ve encountered.

But the real gem here are the pizza sandwiches ($7), made from a swath of pizza dough cooked in a double-decker oven, split, and filled with a dab of tomato sauce and melted mozzarella. Inside go handfuls of lettuce, onion, tomato, pepperocini and the afrorementioned sauces, as well as shawarma or gyro.

The result is a combination of two very delicious foods made by a restaurant whose influences include three countries across the globe. If that’s not the defintion of L.A. cuisine, I don’t know what is.